Oil, Gas & Petrochemical Industries

Hydrogen Sulphide contamination of crude oil can threaten closure of a well head. Statiflo mixers have been used when scavenging agents have been introduced at the well head to de-sour the crude oil before contact with any of the plant.

The Statiflo mixers are required to:

Provide thorough mixing to ensure neither the scavenging agent nor the hydrogen sulphide remained resident beyond the flowline.
operate at a very high pressure (c350bar)
be corrosion resistant
operate in a confined space

To meet these requirements Statiflo designed an extra strong  corrosion resistant alloy Hastelloy C276 with three element mixer. Additional high pressure quick release end connections conforming to oil industry standards.

For further information see case study.

Certain designs of tank blending systems can lead to excessive energy consumption to poor product quality control.

Statiflo recommended that a dedicated transfer pump should be used to provide energy for mixing using a Statiflo motionless mixer installed in a recycling line. Additives being injected at the mixer for optimum effect.

The end result was that mixing times were reduced from several days to approximately 16 hours. Compressed air was no longer required for mixing and oxidation of the base oil eliminated.  The air sparge pipe system was removed from the tank and equipment elsewhere on the plant was no longer starved of compressor air. The sludge buildup was stopped because of improved mixing and lack of overdosing. This was also helped by the pumping the recycling stream from the tank bottom.

Following this success a further nine tanks were converted and each provided with a Statiflo motionless mixer.

For further information see case study.

Mixing of two different types of natural gas in a large diameter pipeline is not straightforward despite the high velocity, high turbulence and low viscosities. Relying on natural turbulence in along pipe for mixing results  in unrepresentative sampling and long time lags in the control system. Good and fast mixing are essential for continuously monitoring and controlling the net heating value of the gas mixture.

In one particular instance two Statiflo motionless mixers were chosen for installation at a gas mixing station on a major gas transmission system. The parallel lines were 900mm diameter, operating at 32 bar g for mixing Siberian natural gas with regasified Algerian LNG. The mixers were designed for use in a high velocity, highly turbulent service.

The end result is that Athens area consumers now rely on Statiflo motionless mixer technology for the continuous monitoring and control of Net Heating Value of natural gas in their city. The equipment is simple, safe, reliable, without moving parts, requiring no maintenance and is ideally suited for a hazardous duty.

For further information see case study.

It is of the utmost importance that seller and customer both know exactly the water content of the oil they are purchasing or selling. This can often be very difficult because the best sampling systems in the world can only provide accurate data if they are taking a representative sample.

Statiflo’s market-leading dual leading edge designs can consistently achieve a C1/C2 ratio above 0.9, in accordance with ISO3171 and API 8.2 standards, therefore meaning that the water is adequately dispersed within the oil and that a representative sample can be taken at the mixer discharge for water in oil analysis.

On some platforms, sea water is filtered to high pressure injection on secondary recovery systems. Chemical injection points were upstream of the filters to improve their performance.

In one particular instants a Statiflo mixer in cupro-nickel was customer designed to fit into a very tight space. There was a pipe section comprising a very short length of and a long radius 900 elbow on the manifold inlet.  A custom designed mixer with mixing elements fitted in both the straight and curved piping. There was even space for an integral polyelectrolyte injector – all within existing dimensions. Much to the relief of the contractor, expensive resiting of the pump and/or filters was avoided.

This special design ensured that each filter received the same dose of polyelectrolyte. The low shear mixing action avoided rupture of the long chain molecules, allowing minimum dosing rates of the expensive additive.

For further information see case study.

A contractor working on a heavy upgrading project in Korea, required a cost effective method of intimately contacting a two phase gas /liquid system. Expensive large diameter towers with complex internal packing were considered to be unsuitable because of the very corrosive nature of the fluids  and the high operating pressures. Contacting would have to be equally effective under two operating conditions; normal operation and regeneration system.

Statiflo were approached to design an online Motionless mixer with diameter identical to the contacting 26” pipe, suitable for operation at 175 kg/cm2 G & full vacuum at 165oC. High pressure flanges were required with internal mixing elements specified in Incoloy 800. Mixing housing was to have Incoloy 800 overlay on carbon steel.

Due to the high operating pressure and very corrosive service, rigorous quality control and testing were essential.

The end result was that that ideal plug flow characteristics and intense radial mixing in the mixer resulted in a predictable and narrow droplet size of liquid in gas. Contacting was optimised in a relatively low cost inline design in corrosion resistant construction. Energy consumption, in terms of pressure drop, was extremely low and well within the capabilities of the pumping systems.

For further information see case study.